Voices of Sport: Jimmy Hill - The Match of the Day presenter who had a profound influence on football

In our weekly series, Yahoo Sport’s Nick Metcalfe features a famous voice of sport. This week, the legendary former Match of the Day presenter Jimmy Hill goes under the spotlight.

We’ve featured many extraordinary characters in this series, but Jimmy Hill was in many ways in a league of his own.

His lifetime in football touched every area of the game. He was a player, manager, campaigner, pioneer. And, of course, for the best part of half a century he was a broadcaster. This article will focus mainly on Hill’s years in television.

Unsurprisingly, Hill loved football all his days. He used to watch his local club Crystal Palace when he was a boy. And his playing career started with Brentford in 1949. Three years at the west London club were followed by nine down the road at Fulham.

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He made nearly 300 appearances for the Cottagers, scoring 52 goals. Five of them came in one match at Doncaster. He helped Fulham to an FA Cup semi-final in 1958 and promotion into Division One.

Hill became chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association and was instrumental in the scrapping of the maximum wage. Even to this present day, with the huge transfer fees commanded by players, you can see how significant a moment that was.

He had to retire from playing in 1961 due to a knee injury, but he was soon appointed Coventry manager. Nobody at that club, or indeed in that city at the time, will forget Hill. Typical of the innovative character he was, Hill ensured Coventry underwent a host of significant changes, as part of the “Sky Blue Revolution”.

The home kit’s colours were changed to sky blue, and with that came a new nickname for the club. He also wrote a special club song, brought in the first colour matchday programme in English football and introduced pre-game entertainment (something copied by Sky Sports decades later).

He came up with the idea of an electronic scoreboard, as part of extensive redevelopment of the club’s Highfield Road ground, and chartered special trains to take fans to away matches. Mascots were introduced and television crews invited in, at a time when the media was banned from grounds. Truly, his influence at Coventry was nothing short of astonishing.

And on the pitch, his six years were wonderful for the Sky Blues. He helped the club to the Division Three title in 1964, and they then won Division Two three years later. It was a surprise when he left in 1967, as the club entered the top flight for the first time in their history.

But Coventry’s loss was broadcasting’s gain. His years in television were surely the most famous of Hill’s storied life, and the first thing most supporters will remember him for. Hill already had some taste of television while still working in football. He was a pundit for ITV’s coverage of the 1964 FA Cup final between Preston and West Ham, and also worked for the BBC as an analyst during the 1966 World Cup in England.

After leaving Coventry, he quickly moved into television full-time. Originally he was technical adviser to the BBC’s football-based drama series United!. And in 1968, he became Head of Sport at London Weekend Television. Hill may be most associated with the BBC, but his time in front of the camera very much began on the other side.

He was an analyst on The Big Match, ITV’s answer to the BBC’s Match of the Day, where he worked alongside presenter Brian Moore, who I profiled in my very first ‘Voices of Sport’ feature last May.

As ever, Hill didn’t just go with the flow, but pushed for change. Another of his innovations was the suggestion of a panel of pundits for big matches. They were introduced for the 1970 World Cup finals. Hill was the main presenter for a classic tournament that featured magical moments like Gordon Banks saving from Pele and a brilliant Brazil team beating Italy in the final. Naturally, TV panels have been with us ever since.

Hill had became a national figure, and when he moved to the BBC to present Match of the Day in 1973 he soon became an iconic television character. Not only did he remain so distinctive, with that famous chin and beard, but his force of personality made the programme feel like it was his domain.

Match of the Day had already established itself as a Saturday night ritual in the nine years it had been on air, with the likes of Kenneth Wolstenholme and David Coleman at the helm, but with Hill in the hot seat the show went from strength to strength.

In the 1970s there were only three channels, and precious little live football, and Match of the Day had a major standing in the game and an often enormous audience. More than 12 million would regularly make it appointment viewing late on a Saturday night.

Hill introduced us to the programme and the action of the day, in his own very authoritative way. He would also comment on the major controversies of the day during the broadcast. It felt for some years like he was the game’s judge and jury. It’s probably right to say that in those heady days, Hill was deserving of the moniker “Mr Football”.

This was long before the days of seeing the goals from every top flight match. Instead, extended highlights of two games would be shown. Hill would often attend one of the matches in person before flying to London’s Television Centre for the programme.

You might not have always agreed with Hill – he could even be infuriating on occasion, and for some he became a figure of fun – but one thing was never in doubt, and that was his deep respect and love for the game.

While he was in his pomp on Match of the Day, Hill returned to Coventry, first as managing director and then as chairman. Despite an enduring love for the game among fans in Britain, this was in many ways a difficult time for football, with hooliganism rife.

Hill restricted ticket sales to discourage away fans and set up a family section at Highfield Road. “To hell with the hooligans, I don’t want them,” he once said. The ground eventually became the first all-seater stadium in the country.

He also decided to embrace sponsorship on the club shirts. The question has to be asked – how could Hill be ahead of his time in so many aspects of the game? It really is remarkable.

Another significant achievement came when he used his influence to become a leading voice in lobbying for the Football Association to reward attacking play by awarding three points, rather than two, for a win.

Oh, and I nearly forgot, Hill also took over as a linesman when an official picked up an injury during one match between Arsenal and Liverpool. And he became a keen show jumper. Truly, a life less ordinary.

But the 1970s, and then 1980s, were mostly about Hill in front of a TV camera. Here’s an example of him at work, presenting a special international Match of the Day in the spring of 1980. The mention of a Home International fixture clearly dates the clip, but otherwise it’s classic Hill. Instant authority and gravitas. The master of the operation.

“Good evening and welcome to Wembley for the second stage of the Home International Championship. Unusually, Northern Ireland and Wales head the table with two points each, leaving England and Scotland trailing, and no doubt judging by the remarks I’ve been listening to, determined to restore normality.”

In the early 1980s, Match of the Day was for a couple of seasons moved away from its traditional Saturday slot to Sunday afternoons. Otherwise it was business as usual – millions of football fans around the country tuning in to see Hill and the key moments from the weekend’s big games.

That familiar theme of Hill being ahead of his time came in the 1983-84 season. He had long argued that one of the weekend’s matches should be shown live on a Friday. Both the BBC and ITV started screening matches that season. The BBC’s first live game saw Manchester United beat Tottenham 4-2 just before Christmas in 1983.

In some ways, although he would say football always came first, Match of the Day did become about Hill too. He was part of the fabric of the programme. Indeed, he was even a regular part of the title sequence, including a giant mural of him at Loftus Road.

A memorable event for Hill came in 1987 when his beloved Coventry beat giants like Manchester United and Leeds to reach the FA Cup final at Wembley. In an all-time classic final, the Sky Blues beat favourites Tottenham 3-2. Hill, who worked for the BBC at the game, was joyous.

Hill was often one to court controversy too. He had a tempestuous relationship with Scotland fans, which started when he described David Narey’s superb strike against Brazil at the 1982 World Cup as a “toe poke”.

For years after, those in the “Tartan Army” used to sing about Hill, and it was even said that he became a notorious “hate figure” in the country. But I’m inclined to believe there was more of a pantomime about that than anything really serious.

When Des Lynam, who I featured in this series last August, took over presenting Match of the Day in 1988, Hill settled into a new punditry role. He regularly clashed with fellow pundit Terry Venables – those two formed quite a double act – and he often upset the game’s top managers. When Hill criticised Manchester United’s Eric Cantona during an FA Cup tie at Norwich in 1994, Alex Ferguson labelled him a “prat”. But the United manager later wrote to Hill to say sorry.

Hill worked on his eighth European Championship for television, when England hosted the 1996 tournament. Two years later, after decades with the BBC, Hill’s last major event with the corporation was the 1998 World Cup in France. The BBC had a purpose-built studio overlooking Paris, at the first tournament that included 32 teams.

It became a memorable television event, with the likes of Des Lynam and Alan Hansen becoming fixtures in our living rooms for the month-long festival. And Hill too, working at his ninth successive World Cup finals. By this time he was a very old friend for us all. He had been part of our footballing lives for longer than most could remember.

Hill departed the BBC in 1999, and moved to Sky Sports, where he featured on Jimmy Hill’s Sunday Supplement, a weekly discussion show between him and three football journalists.

Hill’s health sadly declined when he entered his eighties. It was revealed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He made his final public appearance in Coventry in 2011, with a statue of him unveiled outside the Ricoh Arena. Hill sang “The Sky Blue Song”, which he had written in the 1960s. It was an extremely moving moment.

Hill died in December, 2015, at the age of 87. It was the end of an era in the game. Tributes came from far and wide. Lynam said Hill was “a valued and highly talented colleague with a sharp incisive mind and excellent communication skills.” Gary Lineker, the current presenter of Match of the Day, reflected: “He had such an extraordinary life, he was an extraordinary man. He was a football man through and through.”

I think one of the most apt reflections came from then FA chairman Greg Dyke, who simply said: “In many ways, Jimmy Hill was football.” And that felt right really. Hill almost was the game. He simply did so much to promote it, and his contribution to the sport was immense.

The BBC showed a fabulous documentary in 2016, called “Jimmy Hill: A Man for all Seasons”. Millions tuned in to watch the story of a glorious character.

For those of us of a certain age, we’ll probably always miss Hill. We’re left with many memories of course, and they will be treasured. Good old Jimmy. A true one-off.